Tag: Hobby Lobby

What are we to make of that Supreme Court kerfuffle, Hobby Lobby vs. Your Uterus, et al.?

Should your employer be able to decide and/or influence your reproductive rights? When does an IUD become an IOU? Better still: Do you own the rights to you? Not sure? Better check your gender.

Recent years have been unkind to vaginas and points northward. Forced ultrasounds and unwelcoming probes are the law of the land/wandering hand in many states. Perhaps soon coming to an opening near you.

Even liberal Madison, Wisconsin now lives under the duress of this physical imposition to personhood. Not the male sex personhood, of course. Lately the penis seems to be winning in the affairs of the Cialis motivated heart.

Holly Hobbie was not party to this lawsuit, but she is alive, well and selling briskly on the store shelves of Hobby Lobby. Her virtues and rights, like that of all women, may be questioned by a puzzled Supreme Court, but her fate is far from irrelevant to the tale being told.

As strange backstory, Holly Hobbie is both a fictional character and a real person, author and illustrator of same changed name (Denise Holly Ulinskas.). Yes, Virginia, there is a Sanity Clause. There are, fact, not one, but two Holly Hobbies. One receives royalties, the other IS royalty, if only in some pastel art circles.

Originally conceived as the “blue girl” of the storybook series (rather like a shabby Blue Bonnet Margarine character) Holly is a cutely lass with bonnet who wears an all rag (yes, rag) dress. Basically, if Raggedy Anne somehow got into Smith or Barnard, you’d have Holly Hobbie. You just wouldn’t have much; she still couldn’t hold an aspirin between her patchwork upholstered knees.

In the classic depiction of Holly, her cat is always loyally nearby– perhaps to screen calls, send a fax or dash off on an errand. Often the cat returns with a mouse when she was supposed to bring back skim lattes. Felines. Silly creatures.

But I digress.

You see, in the late 1960’s Holly Hobby, Inc. was sold to the formidable American Greetings conglomerate. To date, mega licensing deals have generated thousands of mass produced Holly Hobbie products, nearly all of it embracing the vague, homespun aesthetic that is America. Holly may as well have been home schooled at Cracker Barrel. Instead, like many an iconic figure in popular culture, she has been merchandised like an overworked streetwalker. Apparently she still can’t lose the pimp.

Remember Lucy from Peanuts? Where is she now? Living in Santa Cruz as a lesbian acupuncturist, no doubt. Show biz can be that unkind.

But with the kismet of destiny came our missing punchline. Hobby Lobby, Inc. entered, stage far right…. just past the “Jesus Loves Anti-Semites” refrigerator magnets and the “Stop Tickling My Elmo Paper Doll Cut Out Book & Blue-Ray DVD… Now with Interactive Virtual Wetness.” Check Aisle 6. Next to the Goo Gone.

The Hobby Lobby lawsuit was fresh from the Mitt Romney School of “People are Corporations, My Friends.” Right here in River City. Yet the “P” and “C” did not stand for Political Correctness. Not right here. Their hobby WAS their lobby. Beyond coincidence, Washington is packed with really white, fresh-faced lobbyists picked at the very peak of their fanatical conservatism. Nlame the Farm Bill.

And here is where Holly Hobbie Meets Hobby Lobby, at the apparent mummification of the Supreme Court. If Abbott & Costello had lady parts, they’d have be named as Third Party Plaintiffs, unless already mislabeled as “domestic partners” by the often false, Fox News.

So the question was asked: Can the Supreme Court, these hallowed thinkers, the brightest Breitbarts in the land, lead us through the valley of their own inconsistent insincerity?

And can they activate my new transit card? I need to travel and have stores to boycott. Simply:

1. It’s hard to forgive Hobby Lobby for the disastrous launch of their Hanukkah cards. The Top 10 Scratch’n Sniff Scents of Israel sold poorly, especially in the humidity of a retiring Florida summer. “We’re shvitzing here something awful, Hyman!” someone coughed.

2. The employees of Hobby Lobby should not to be subjected to the corporate overreach of management’s aggressive religiosity. I’m sorry, but the hand of God should not be holding an intrauterine device that doubles as a scrapbooking tool.

3. Historically, Holly Hobbie herself is an idealized representation of the purist feminine form, an illustrative Barbie, a virginal (not vaginal) Holly Golightly. Her image should not be reduced, disrespected or diminished by corporate manhandling. The dignity of all women suffer when privacy and personhood can be taken away with the swipe of a pricing gun.

4. And finally: All men must ultimately act as Gentlemen, a word seldom seen except on Men’s room doors or gender neutral Thursdays in Indiana. They must accept that women were created equal to men in the eyes of God— A God who, ironically enough, turned out to be one helluva arts ‘n crafter.